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Beta Caeli
The Beta Caeli system is extremely similar to the solar system, with a barren, rocky inner planet, terrestrial planets in the habitable zone of the inner system, followed by gas giants in the outer system that first increase and then decrease in size, and a tiny rock outermost. This suggests either that the "cigar" hypothesis of planetary formation holds true instead of the prevailing solar nebula hypothesis (the former proposes that a passing star rips a band of matter from another, a band that's thicker in the middle and tapers off at the ends), or that the game designers took the easy way out, or that Beta Caeli was one of a relative handful of stars found to have a Sun-like solar system (like HD 154345 in the previous paragraph) and was selected for human habitation for that reason. * Beta Caeli (F0-type Star; Blue-White in color) * Alpha Asteroid Belt; analogous to the nonexistent Vulcanoids * Hermes (Rocky Planet); analogous to Mercury * Rhea (Earth-like Planet) Similar to Venus in position, but has a large Moon and is slightly larger than Earth. The presence of the large natural satellite and a quick rotation rate supposedly prevented the runaway greenhouse effect, making it Earth-like. ** Prometheus (Natural Satellite of Rhea), analogous to Earth's Moon * Gaea (Earth-like Planet); the Calypso starts the game orbiting Gaea. It has no moon. * Ares (Desert Planet); analogous to Mars but poor in iron * Beta Asteroid Belt; analogous to the Solar System's main asteroid belt * Zeus (Gas Giant); analogous to Jupiter ** Hera (Natural Satellite of Zeus); analogous to Io but larger and less volcanically active ** Hebe (Natural Satellite of Zeus); analogous to Ganymede * Cronus (Gas Giant); analogous to Saturn but has no rings or moons. * Poseidon (Gas Giant); analogous to Uranus and Neptune ** Thetis (Natural Satellite of Poseidon); analogous to Triton but larger * Hades (Minor Planet); analogous to Pluto Behind the scenes The naming of the Caelian planets closely matches that of naming planets in our solar system. But while our system uses the names of Roman deities (except for Uranus), Caeli has Greek ones; Rhea and Gaea are both Greek goddesses of the Earth. One amusing artifact that can be found in the game details a movement demanding that Roman names be used for the Caelian planets also. In addition, as Beta Caeli is brighter and hotter than the Sun, the Caelian planets are more distant from their sun than their Solar System analogs are. In reality, Beta Caeli may be too bright and young to host life, a fact noted in the game itself where they noted that the system is 2.5 billion years old but an F0 star lasts for about 5 billion years, yet both Earth-like planets have advanced life forms. Beta Caeli, a blue-white star considerably brighter than the Sun, was chosen as the setting for the story because it is fairly far from the Sun and has a name containing an easily-remembered Bayer designation. In reality, G-type stars like our Sun would be far more likely to be chosen for human settlement, but at the distance of Beta Caeli—the in-game motive for this distance, of course, being to get away from the Centaurians—would be quite dim and almost certainly have a hard-to-remember Henry Draper Catalog designation, such as the recently-discovered real system HD 154345, or at best, a Flamsteed designation like 37 Geminorum or 18 Scorpii. The real Beta Caeli, meanwhile, is not considered particularly habitable, and is not being observed by any of the major planet-hunting groups. Category:Alien Legacy